July 28, 2011

Words and music

Observing the birth of Gerard Manly Hopkins on this date in 1844 and looking for the text of one my favorite Hopkins poems, I stumbled across this gem on YouTube – the wonderful Natalie Merchant singing the poems of both lesser and greater poets. Hopkins comes at about the 16 minute mark, but if you have 25 minutes, watch to the end.

Text of Hopkins’ Spring and Fall:

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By & by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep & know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.